July 09, 2010

ICI's 1,000th subscriber

On July 3, 2010, the 1,000th person subscribed to my Indian Comics Irregular newsletter. If I do say so myself, that's quite an achievement.

The subscriber with the longest tenure joined February 1, 2000--soon after I created the IndianComicsIrregular Yahoo Group for ICI. By that time I posted the first issue--Saguarrior Pins Villainy (ICI #20, December 20, 1999)--online, the newsletter already was two years old.

So I've kept ICI going monthly for 12 years. The end of 2010 should see issue #200.

Of course, some subscribers are Asian Indians who saw the word "Indian" in the title and thought it was about them. And some of those are telemarketers who joined only to spam the group with ads. I think there's a whole contingent of Asian Indians who are paid to do nothing but post spam to blogs and forums.

But if they remain members after learning ICI is about American Indians, or after seeing I've deleted their messages unposted, that's okay by me. It's not my place to judge the motives of loyal subscribers.

Subscribers come and go, but a net of 5-10 join every month. Now we're up to 1,006. We'll see how long it takes to reach 2,000.

Below:  A stereotypical B.C. comic strip from ICI #15 (August 1999).

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